Talisman

I have a friend, here in Glastonbury, who we’ll call Mark.  He’s a talented wood carver and one of the most generous people I know.  Every time we meet, he has some lovely trinket or other which he wants to give me.  Apparently he does it for all his friends.  He comes into the story later, but I had to put him there before I started.

Now for the story.

There’s a lovely lady I met several years ago at a conference.  She’s a spiritual seeker, a lover of trees and nature and a very caring, sensitive person.  She adores Glastonbury, and despite living in a city in Switzerland, she comes here for short visits whenever she can.  We always meet up when she’s here, usually in town for a meal, but this time I felt a strong urge to invite her to my home.  I never question such feelings any more – just act on them.

She only had two days to spend here this time and she’d spent the first hunting for a special object that would remind her of Glastonbury and embody the spirit of the place for her when she was far off in her own country.
“It could be anything,” she said. “Maybe I’ll find it in a charity shop. Maybe it will be just a stick or something simple.”

She showed me an egg-shaped stone she had bought, carved from local crystal.  I could tell that, much as she liked it, she wasn’t convinced that this was the special object she had come to find.  Now she had a dilemma.  Should she spend the next day – her last – hunting for The Object or should she relax and enjoy the delights of Glastonbury while she could?

“Would you…  I feel bad for asking, but could you ask your Guide?” she asked.

Then I knew why I’d needed to invite her here.  She’s had advice from, Koimul, my spirit guide before.  I opened the computer and asked Koimul if it would be possible to seek advice for her.  Koimul said it would.

I typed:

“Did she find the object that will allow her to remember Glastonbury when she is at home, or should she search for it tomorrow?”

Sometimes the responses I receive come ‘out of the blue’.  Sometimes I can feel them – or snatches of them – just before the pendulum spells out the replies.  I certainly knew what the first part of Koimul’s reply would be before it came.  I also knew that it wouldn’t satisfy my friend.

MUCH OF GLASTONBURY LIVES IN HER HEART

It was true.  We all carry the essence of the places we love within ourselves and can draw on feelings and memories whenever we wish to.  In my mind – because I knew my friend wanted more – I asked for advice on an object.  Koimul was ahead of me, though.  Without pausing, the message continued and I became aware of the word ‘talisman’.  It was a perfect way to describe what she sought.

Slowly, as the crystal wheeled around the keyboard, I realised what was coming.  I started to laugh with utter delight.  My wise guide had the perfect solution!  The words that were spelled out said:

BUT IF SHE WANTS A TALISMAN IT WILL BE GOOD TO GIVE HER THE RUNE

This is where ‘Mark’ re-enters the story.  Once, he and I had been discussing Dion Fortune – a writer and occultist who had lived in Glastonbury early in the last century.  He told me he had recently been asked to cut down an overhanging branch from a yew tree which had been in Dion’s former garden, just along the road from my cottage.  He had, he said, used every scrap of this very special wood to make a wonderful set of runes and other items, because he felt that something of her presence remained in it.  He had given me a tiny pendant, carved from a fragment of the branch and hung from a leather thong. It bore the symbol for the letter I in Ogham, as well as the word for ‘yew tree’.

The strange thing is that although it had been given to me and was a lovely object, I had never felt it was mine.  I’d worn it once or twice, but always I felt uncomfortable – as if I had no right to this, and it was meant for someone else.

Koimul’s message made perfect sense to me.  This little pendant (she’d said it might be a stick!) encompassed all that my friend loved about Glastonbury.  I rushed upstairs to find it, hurriedly told her its background and joyfully handed it to its rightful owner.

When she had stopped crying, she slipped it over her head and it looked perfect.  It belonged with her.  There was just enough light left in the evening sky for me to take her down the road and show her the tree it had come from.

Another reminder of how magical life can be when we let go and allow it to gently unfold.

 

 

Personal Reality – More of That

I’ve been quiet recently – for me.  In that cogitating, contemplative space patiently (fairly patiently) waiting for answers to emerge to new questions.  Probably really old questions, phrased in a slightly different way, but I needed some new answers.

I asked someone I didn’t know that well, but respected.
“Ho’oponopono,” she told me.  “It changed my life.”
I groaned.  Anything but that! I’d first encountered it at a symposium.  A young female speaker standing before us, tears flowing down her face, urging the whole audience to repeat with her, over and over, “I’m sorry.  Please forgive me.  Thank you.  I love you.”
I had no idea what I was supposed to be apologising for, nor yet who I was apologising to or claiming to love.  We were given no context, just and hour and a half of wailing and weeping.  I wasn’t moved – or impressed.
Nevertheless, I agreed to read the book my adviser suggested: Zero Limits by Dr Joe Vitale.  The writer seemed genuine and convinced, but all he said left me cold.

Confused, I turned to Koimul, my Spirit Guide.
IT IS A VALID TRUTH, I was told, BUT IT IS NOT YOUR TRUTH.  IT WILL NOT SERVE YOU.

That was a relief.

Then, gradually, I became conscious that some words had appeared in my mind: The Nature of Personal Reality.  They kept repeating until I finally took notice and wondered why they sounded familiar.  Eventually it dawned on me that it was another book title.  Not a book I’d read, but one I’d heard of:  one of Jane Roberts’ Seth books.  Instantly, I put in an order for the book.  It finally arrived yesterday and because I was inspired to find it, I know it will help.

Koimul hadn’t finished dropping clues in my path, though.  I was led to explore a post on a scientific website.  It was about an article that has recently been published in a peer-reviewed journal called, promisingly, NeuroQuantology.

I like it when scientists clamber nervously out of their little boxes and start trying to join things together.  After all, we’ve gone over 100 years now with ‘mainstream’ science insisting that the rules of quantum science apply only to very small and – OK, grudgingly, it seems – to very big things but not to the everyday stuff in between that works fine with good old Cartesian Newtonian principles.  Seriously?

So anyway, this magazine is apparently exploring ways of mixing neuroscience with quantum theory to study the vexed matters that conventional science has no answer to: The Consciousness Question, for a start.  About time, one might venture…

The hero of this tale is one Dr Kirk Meijer, working at a university in The Netherlands.  A cautionary note here:  As a non-scientist, all I have to go on is a very brief overview of his findings, as reported by someone on a website who had read his article.  I could attempt to read the original, but I’d probably fall at the first sentence, such is my lack of scientific knowledge.  What follows, then, is the briefest summary of a summary of a summary of this man’s cutting edge work, but it fascinates me.

Consciousness, Dr Meijer seems to be saying, resides in a field surrounding the brain, but in another spatial dimension.  This field can pick up information from anywhere and transmit it instantaneously to the brain – the whole brain, not just certain areas – by a process called Quantum Wave Resonance, a wave pattern that encompasses all neurons.  It’s then down to the brain to interpret what consciousness has passed to it, along the neural pathways it has established.

Wow!  Finally a theory that is starting to sound right.

It follows, you see, that because each individual ‘mental field’, aka Consciousness, can access other fields, this could allow for the existence, so long denied by mainstream science, of what the article calls ‘anomalous phenomena’ – remote viewing, telepathy, déjà vu, dowsing, channelling and the like.

Best of all, the article I read gives this utterly delicious quote:

Consciousness can be regarded as the most basic building block of nature and consequently is present at all levels of the fabric of reality.

Just think of the progress humanity will make when the brilliant minds of scientists are unleashed to encompass what spirituality has been telling us for so long.  Zero limits indeed.

And maybe my ‘mental field’, linking as it does to all others, can go by the name of Koimul.

Am I where I want to be?

Yesterday someone sent me an email.  If the photo the sender attached was to be believed, it was a smart, squeaky-clean young American.  He told me I’d been accepted as a member of an organisation called the Association of Spiritual Writers or some such.  Can’t remember the exact wording, as I deleted it pretty quick.

For a start, I hadn’t applied to join any such group.  For an end, he quickly moved into an unabashed sales patter, telling me that in order to get top price ticket sales at my talks, I needed to enrol on his training course, which would maximise my earnings.

Sorry to disappoint you, young Sir, but I have not the slightest interest in making money from spiritual writing or talking.  Sharing ideas, having dialogues, learning and discovering, yes – those things are hugely important to me, but that’s where it stops.

It made me think, though.  Do I have what I want now, in the autumn of my life?  And the answer seems to be that yes, I do.

I own a very small, sweet, though slightly damp and crumbly, old cottage in a beautiful part of England.  I get enough money from my pension to pay the bills and live each month and although I don’t run a car, have expensive holidays or buy luxury items, I have all I need to be comfortable and to give a little to charities I care about.

I still do some private tutoring, charging less by the hour than I pay a handyman to chop and stack my logs.  I’m fine with that, too.  I do it because teaching was my first love and I enjoy keeping contact with it and helping children who would otherwise be struggling.

I spend vast amounts of time making 1/12 scale miniature figures and room settings by upcycling mass produced and junk items.  It’s a brilliant hobby for me.  I can be creative, inventive and gloriously messy.  It involves constant problem-solving that keeps my mind active.
People say, “You must have such patience,” but for me it’s a kind of meditation.  I do my deepest meditating when I’m hand-stitching a minuscule white shirt or sticking tiny tufts of hair on to a wig base.
I display and sell the fruits of my labour at craft sales, get smiles and lovely comments and have fascinating conversations all day.  I make modest amounts of money – which I pass on to my son and his partner, as they are saving up for a deposit on their first home.

Strangely, at almost every sale I’m approached by some smartly dressed young man who eagerly tells me how I could make masses more money from my crafting by doing this on Instagram or that on You Tube.  I smile, thank them politely and carry on doing what I do.

I’ll happily trade the lack of stress, deadlines and problems for the lack of wealth and material goods.  I’m happy, I’m still learning every day and I have a wonderful life.